A daily devotional moment by Chris Garcia
You can hear the Spirit loudest in silence. Some of the most profound moments I have ever had with God were in moments of absolute silence. I call them "holy hushes." In the silence, when you are still, that is where your mind is. Your flesh. All of your distractions drop down to a baseline. You can hear the Spirit more clearly when you learn to be still. The Scripture says, "Be still and know that I am God." Be still. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses did not need music to get into the presence of God. They learned to be still. They learned to commune with Him. There is nothing wrong with music as we use it all the time. There is also a moment, a time to reflect. To pause. To selah. To dwell. To think on Him. Some of you want to be very sensitive. Do you want to grow in spiritual sensitivity? Learn to be still. Do you want to hear His voice? Learn to be still. My favorite time ever to be with the Lord is when there is absolute silence. People ask me all the time. "Pastor Chris, how do you pray?" "Like what do you do in prayer" is their question. My response is the same response that I have heard Michael Koulianos say, and I would echo what he says. Which is “Hopefully nothing.” What do you mean hopefully nothing? Because there is a time and moment in prayer when the Spirit takes over. Where it is not you praying or you trying to do anything. But it is the Spirit of God blowing the gentle breath of His Spirit. Leading you into greater depths of intimacy. Through silence. Jesus, when He would pray, would seclude Himself in prayer. He went to the secret place. He would go into the prayer closet. Or He would go to Gethsemane and pray. Or He would go somewhere far off in the wilderness or out in nature and be still and worship the Father and spend time with God. I was teaching a class last night on evangelism and dependency on the Holy Spirit and I find it very interesting, and I also shared this in the class last night. That the disciples never asked Jesus the question "Jesus teach us how to prophesy."
They never once came to Him and said, "Teach us how to raise the dead." Or heal the sick. Or cast out devils. Never once did they ask Him that. Rather, what they did ask Jesus, was Jesus, "teach us how to pray." Why? Because they saw this relationship. This rhythm between Jesus' secluded prayer life and the ministry of the Spirit that flowed out of Him. In Marks's Gospel, in the first chapter, the Bible says that early in the morning long before the sun rose, Jesus went to a secluded place and prayed. They could not find Him. His disciples would look all over for Him unable to find His whereabouts. Many hours after daybreak, they found Jesus alone, secluded, and in prayer. They said, "Master we have been looking for you." We have been all over. Where have you been? "People are looking for You that are needing ministry from You," Jesus said, “Let us get going from here so that I may preach also.” Wait a minute. Jesus said this is why I came to preach here also? But before that explosion of a powerful ministry, He spent time secluded in prayer. Do you want to walk in the anointing? Do you want to walk in a greater anointing in your life? Do you want to understand what the anointing is like? Pray. What do we do when we pray? Essentially, the average prayer life of a US pastor is 7 mins a day. The average prayer life of everyday believers is probably even less than that because people do not know how to pray. They think that prayer life is a chore or some task. Or they have to take some list and read this prayer list. But they limit prayer to just that. Or they limit prayer to just things that they are saying and we do those things and 5 mins go by but we feel like we have been there for an eternity. That is because we are doing it from the flesh. The purpose and the aim of the prayers are not just to pray about things but to pray with Him. To be with Him. To be in communion with Him. To develop your fellowship with God.